The paper attempts to give an outline of the main doctrines of the Brentano-School and to mark the place of Bergman's contributions to descriptive Psychology. The idea of an immanent object is rejected by Marty and Bergman and was critized by Bergman in the framework of the 'concept-intuition'-distinction. It is shown that Bergman's critic leads to an interesting defense of the thesis of the privacy of mental contents.

Bergman's view on the History of philosophy can be characterised as a heuristic doctrine which helps the philosophical pedagogue. Some problems arising from Bergman's religious way of thinking are revealed as underpinning the objections to it, as there are: the multiplicity of systems, the possibility of acquiring final truth, etc. In spite of these objections Bergman's ideas can be maintianed as a very efficient means for a teacher of academic philosophy.

Two stages are discernible in S.H. Bergman's philosophical development. The early Bergman differs from the later Bergman as much in the philosophical method as in the choice of the fields of research and problems to deal with. The early Bergman acted predominantly as a philosopher of science, focussing his attention on the ultimate presuppositions of scientific thinking. In the second stage this gave way to speculations of a rather anthropological character. The laterBergman sought to solve the riddle of human existence by a theory centering on the social nature of human rationality and claiming a theological explanation of its emergence.

Bergman's account of Cusanus's view of the relationship between God and the world leaves room for reservations. Bergman maintains that Cusanus is either a pantheist or a panentheist. This view, at variance with Cusanus's explicit theism, is hardly tenable in the light of a suitable interpretation of his apparently pantheistic or panentheistic formulations. Bergman's treatment of enfolding and unfolding, and especially of the arithmetical illustration of those relations, is deficient. His ascription of manifest Platonism to Cusanus's theory of enfolding is objectionable, since, for Cusanus, the enfolding entities are not universals and need not even be existents. The way in which Bergman compares Cusanus with Goethe and with Rudolf Otto is misleading. So is his account of Cusanus's principle of the coincidence of opposites.

Approximationism — science approximates the truth as an ideal — is the view of science implicit in all of Einstein's major works, heralded by Hugo Bergman in Hebrew in 1940 and expressed by Karl Popper in 1954 and 1956. Yet Bergman was not sufficiently clear about it, and even Popper is not - as shown by their not giving up certain remnants of the older views which approximationism replaces, even when these remnants are inconsistent with approximationism. Norare the approximationist theories of these authors satisfactory solutions to all the problems which traditional epistemologies purported to solve. Approxiamtionism still is a program rather than a fully blown theory.

The relations between philosophy, science and religion preoccupied S.H. Bergman for many years. He wanted to corroborate, by belief, a personal God to whom, and not only about whom, one can speak. This should follow from authentic religious experience, making it independent from philosophy. Furthermore, according to Bergman, religion can do what philosophical reasoning is incapable of doing since he considers belief to be stronger than knowledge. A criticalscrutiny of these assumptions involves some interesting implications concerning toleration, freedom-of-thought and dogmatism. The final conclusion consists in that belief cannot refute philosophical knowledge but can reject it while philosophy can refute belief but cannot reject it.

Bergman's approach to epistemology has deep roots in the Prague School of philosophy, particularly in the philosophical system of Bolzano and an interest in the problem of inner perception. In his criticism of Kant's system, however, we also find an emphasis on faith as an attitude of trust and confidence between man and God. This move is not meant to present faith as superior to knowledge or replacing it. The trend is rather in the direction of a complex co-existence of the two attitudes. This co-existence comes to the fore in the relation between construction and evidence and a certain delineation of the spheres to which these concepts can be applied. The suggestion is that in spite of the presence of evidence in the inner realm of human perception, that realm is open to the immanent sphere. Paradoxically self-certainty exhibited in faith goes beyond the self, while construction as a liberate activisation of the self remains within the empirical.

Bergman's views on the relation between philosophy and religion are critically examined by following his discussions of the Neo-Kantians and, among others, of Nicolaus Cusanus, Kierkegaard, Buber and Sri Aurobindo. Thereby his thesis that philosophy and religion form a unity is criticised together with his attempt atabandoning philosophy in view of its idealistic results which deprive men of actual reality. Finally it is argued that reason has to be reestablished since despite its being insufficient there is nothing to replace or complement it.

On Thomas Reid's 18thC theory of psychology and ontology, our conception of primary qualities was original and our conception of secondary qualities was acquired. The conception of both was a response to sensations. In the Inquiry Reid insisted that our original conceptions were automatic and irresistible, while in the Essays he insisted that our conception of general attributes arises from a two step process of abstraction and generalization. These doctrines are rendered consistent by a distinction between particular attributes, which exist and are conceived by abstraction, and general attributes, which do not exist and are conceived by generalization guided by their utility in knowledge and communication.

Meinong's doctrine of the modal moment and the watering-down of extranuclear properties to surrogate nuclear counterparts was offered in response to Russell's problem of the existent round square. To avoid an infinite regress of successively watered-down factualities, Meinong stipulates that the modal moment itself cannot be watered-down. This limits free assumption, since it means that the idea of the existent-cum-modal-moment round square cannot be entertained in thought. It is possible to eliminate the modal moment and watering-down from Meinongian semantics in favor of a strict enforcement of the distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties. This provides a simpler, more economical Meinongian object theory, and regains unrestricted free assumption.

Motivations for systems of free logics are reviewed and systems are divided according as they are positive (asserting atomic truths with non-denoting terms) negative (denying all such sentences) or neutral. A positive theory is developed and defended. One of the major considerations in favor of the theory is that it allows (via translation) representation of the other points of view. Finally, the relation between free logic and truth theories is elaborated.

An attempt is made in the present essay to accommodate various senses of the notion of existence and ofthat of non-existence within the framework of logic. With this aim in view a system of Lesniewski's Ontology, referred to as System S, is outlined. Equipped with appropriate definitions and illustrated with a selection of theses it offers a logical theory of existence and non-existence. The usefulness of the theory is then tested by interpreting in its terms some of the principal notions and assertions of Meinong's ontology. A few brief comments on the notion of 'possible object' and on 'semantics' of fiction conclude the essay.

Four questions are raised about the semantics of Quantified Modal Logic (QML). Does QML admit possible objects, i.e. possibilia? Is it plausible to admit them? Can sense be made of such objects? Is QML committed to the existence of possibilia?The conclusions are that QML, generalized as in Kripke, would seem to accommodate possibilia, but they are rejected on philosophical and semantical grounds. Things must be encounterable, directly nameable and a part of the actual order before they may plausibly enter into the identity relation. QML is not committed to possibiha in that the range of variables may be restricted to actual objects.Support of the conclusions requires some discussion of substitution puzzles; also, the semantical distinction between proper names which are directly referring, and descriptions even where the latter are "rigid designators".Views of W.V. Quine, B. Russell, K. Donnellan, D. Kaplan as well as S. Kripke are invoked or evaluated in conjunction with these issues.

Brentano's famous thesis of the Intentionality of the Mental was already formulated by Thomas Reid who used it in his campaign against the Locke-Berkeley-Hume Theory of Ideas. Apphed to the case of conceiving the thesis says that to conceive is to conceive something. This principle stands in apparent conflict with the common-sensical view, defended by Reid, that we can conceive what does not exist. Both principles, it is argued, are plausible and should be retained. The problem is how to resolve the apparent contradiction. Reid's way out of the dilemma is clarified by contrasting it with less satisfactory solutions.

The view that a possible world is an existing abstract object implies that all nonexistent possible individuals have a principle of individuation in terms of existing objects, properties, and relations. However, some individuals of this kind are totally out of this world both in the subjective sense that nobody in this world can pick them out, and in the ontological sense that they would neither be created by assembling or arranging existing bits of matter nor otherwise be generated by existing items. The only acceptable principle of individuation for such nonexistent possibles is that they are individuated by their unexemplified haecceities.

The question ''Was 'existence' ever a predicate?" in a way already suggests its own answer, that this is really the wrong question to ask, because 'existence' has always been a predicate. Even those, such as Kant, who supposedly opposed this view, in fact held it. They merely denied that 'existence' is a "normal" first-order predicate. Not only Kant, but also Bolzano, Frege and Russell claimed that it is a second-order predicate. There is substantive disagreement between Kant and Bolzano on the one hand and Frege and Russell on the other over two issues: the former claim that this second-order predicate apphes to no concept analytically and that it can be properly ascribed to a singular concept, whereas the latter deny both of these claims.

Meinong justifies the need of his Gegenstandstheorie by presenting it as a generalization of (existing) metaphysics, in that the former deals with both existent and non-existent objects, whereas the latter used to deal with existent objects only. But this justification is disingenuous, since the notion of a non-existent object is virtually a contradiction in terms for the traditional paradigm. What Meinong is really proposing is a conceptual revolution of a Kantian variety, and we need to get clearer about the full import of this revolution. This is what the present paper attempts to do.